From the desk of Ted Strong, senior writer:

Today I went and got the police log. At the station I selected what I felt were the 12 incidents or arrests that had the highest news value. Then I missed my bus.

So I walked into town with Tom Jensen, who happened to be headed that direction just as the bus failed to stop long enough for me to catch it. Tom’s been involved with politics in town for a while now, and I interview him pretty much every few months because of something or other. In case anyone wonders, this is the same Tom Jensen who writes the column in The Chapel Hill Herald. This time we got to chat, no interview involved.

At any rate, Tom and I talked about a whole range of things, including the police reports I had just finished reading. One of the things he wanted to know was: When you’re reading the reports, how do you select which will make it to the paper.

I gave him a summarized version, because walking up the hill into town tends to cut my verbosity, but I feel like it’s a process that deserves some explanation for the general public.

They weren’t necessarily the 12 most serious offenses, though to be sure, double felonies got extra points. The decisions I made were ultimately based on a variety of factors, including the severity of the offense, the prominence of the people involved (no one today was particularly famous), uniqueness, representativeness, insight into the human condition, etc. In the end, it’s a reporter’s job to make an in-the-field judgment call. I do my best but undoubtedly could do better, as is the case in pretty much every decision made on the fly, with minimal review and by one person. In the end, every report is not evaluated on every news value; instead, a reporter mulls it in his mind like he might swish a drink in his mouth. The tasty drink gets drunk and the compelling story gets printed.

One thing that disappointed me was that today I had to leave behind a bunch of DWI’s.
Seriously, there must have been close to 10. But they happen every day, and I knew I only had 10 inches, and there were a bunch of other crimes today. Still, in a perfect world, we’d have the space to run all of those.

We’d also run the handful of car breakings-and-enterings that were reported. I noticed a couple of Hondas, they’re pretty common targets, but some other stuff too. Left them though, same reason: no space.

And of the 12 I decided to write down, nine didn’t make it into the paper — eight or so inches is a finite amount of room, and important incidents also are often lengthy.

A brief rundown of the three that did make, and why they made it:

*A homeless man was arrested on charges of selling counterfeit crack to a police officer, according to Chapel Hill police reports. — felony, homelessness, odd crime

*A teenager arrested on felony charges of trying to pass a photocopied $20 bill, according to Chapel Hill police reports. — felony, odd crime, perhaps-not-terribly-well-thought-through-crime. Also, the report states that the suspect volunteered to be searched (in an “adversarial tone”) and that the bill was then found in his pocket.

*A homeless woman was arrested on charges of drunk and disorderly conduct after passing out in the middle of a road and cursing at EMS and police personnel who tried to assist her, Chapel Hill police report. — really a commentary on the human condition, tragedy averted, homelessness, odd crime (well, actually, odd circumstances leading up to crime)

Now, here are some of the items that didn’t make it:

*At 12:38 a.m. Sunday police received a report of gunshots coming from a parking lot on East Rosemary Street, according to Chapel Hill police reports.

*A man living on Gellen Place reported that his green 1997 Ford Escort, valued at $5,000, was stolen sometime between 10 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. Saturday, according to Chapel Hill police reports.

*Michelle Nichole Mize, 28, of Plano, Texas, and a sales associate for Extreme Chemical Company, was arrested at 3:48 p.m. Saturday on charges of soliciting without a permit, according to Chapel Hill police reports.
Reports state that Mize, who was arrested at 138 Essex Road after a resident complained she was selling cleaning supplies without a permit, was transported to Orange County Jail in lieu of $160 secured bail and is scheduled to appear in District Criminal Court in Hillsborough on Nov. 13.

*Favio Montelongo, 45, of the streets of Chapel Hill, was cited on charges of public consumption of alcohol at 3:20 p.m. Saturday at Town Parking Lot Five on West Franklin Street, according to Chapel Hill police reports.
Reports state that the “subject passed out in a town parking lot after consuming a malt beverage on town property.”
According to reports, Montelongo is scheduled to appear in District Criminal Court in Hillsborough on Dec. 11.

*Damian Leotis McFadden, 31, of Raleigh, was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, speeding and driving with a revoked license at 8:33 p.m. Saturday on East Franklin Street near Estes Drive, according to Chapel Hill police reports.
Reports state McFadden possessed a one-gram “blunt” valued at $10 and was released on a written promise to appear at District Criminal Court in Chapel Hill on Dec. 12.

*A Chapel Hill woman reported that five pounds of ground meat was stolen from her freezer sometime between 1:50 p.m. Thursday and 1:50 p.m. Saturday, Chapel Hill police reports state.

*A Chapel Hill man reported that 13 alcoholic beverages were stolen from his garage between 7:45 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Friday, according to Chapel Hill police reports.
Reports state that the loss consisted of six hefenweizen, valued at $10, six microbrews, valued at $10, and one white wine, valued at $25.

I don’t really know what to say except that these didn’t seem as important or as telling as the three that made it. Obviously, they have some value, that’s why I’m putting them here. The thing to remember about police logs is that tomorrow we could end up running a report of one stolen flowerpot because nothing else happens, so expanding the log so that we can run 25 incidents a day is probably not a viable long-term solution.

Of course, even if we ran every incident that was of importance to even a single reader, perhaps 80 percent of the reports I read would never leave the station. Most of them are only the very edges of stories, or very, very, very boring stories, or the edges of stiflingly boring stories.

“How can public information only touch the edges of a story?” you ask. Easy: The real story might not fit into any of the boxes on the form, and so no one knows to ask for it. Or it might be redacted, because protected parties are involved. Or it might be that the interesting part doesn’t involve the police. Or it might be a thousand other things. Reporters only can find the stories they can see, and only some things are visible in police reports.

In the end, the police blotter is and always will be an imperfect picture of the world of crime. What we can hope for is that whatever small part of that world is shown through this window is not distorted by it, and that we show the most relevant part of the world we can.

From Staff Writer Colin Campbell:

In the month I spent working on the Monday Spotlight story on campus energy, I came across a lot of interesting facts, and only so many of them could fit into the paper. Here are a few bits of info that didn’t make the cut:

-Both the cogeneration plant and the chiller plants have sophisticated monitoring
equipment. From the computers in the control rooms, operators can see not only what’s going on inside the plant, but how much energy each building is using on campus. Chilled water systems meters 160 buildings this way, and they can spot problems with a building’s efficiency, which officials expect will lead to major improvements and savings within the next two years.
-Condensation lines–which carry the condensated water that remains after steam is used in buildings–return 85 percent of the water back to use.Many utilities do not do this — New York City, for example, dumps their condensated water into the Hudson River.
-The auditorium in the Carrington Hall addition features carbon dioxide monitors. They detect when carbon dioxide levels in the room are high due to a large number of people, and bring in more outside air. High carbon dioxide levels are common in crowded lecture halls, and this can cause one to feel sleepy.
-Rams Head Dining Hall composts the food left on trays after students finish their meals. Dishwashing staff scrapes the food off plates, and it’s then dehydrated, chopped up, and carted away for composting.

Sarah Rabil, a senior writer on the Investigative Team, used social science research methods and computer-assisted reporting skills to provide readers with a fresh look at SAT test score ranks. The SAT average test scores were released at the end of August by the College Board, the not-for-profit association that provides the SAT program.
When the ranks were released, North Carolina appears to come in 38th place. However, many people don’t realize that these rankings are not controlled for influences such as poverty levels or participation - demographics that can account for more than two-thirds of a state’s ranking. Sarah Rabil used a statistical analysis software to produce an original look at this data, something that - to our knowledge - hasn’t been done before by a newspaper.

Feel free to comment on this blog or to us with questions. You can contact me at shanbow@email.unc.edu. Sarah can be reached at srabil@email.unc.edu.
-Shannan M. Bowen, Investigative Team Editor

Here’s what Sarah Rabil has to say about how she did this story:

Ranking average state SAT scores has been a common practice among the media, parents and educators for years. North Carolina held a solid 48th place for many years as reported by the news media. But myriad factors influence a state’s average score, particularly dramatic differences in the percentage of high school seniors taking the SAT and also poverty levels in the state.
The Daily Tar Heel used SPSS, a statistical analysis software, to analyze average state SAT scores for the years 2000-2006. In SPSS, linear regression was used to correlate participation and poverty rates (independent variables) to a state’s average SAT score (dependent variables) each year.
Linear regression used participation and poverty to generate an equation for a line to predict the score of a given state. This levels the effect of participation and poverty. The difference between a state’s predicted score and actual score allowed states to be compared and re-ranked.
Only the critical reading and math components were used. The 2006 writing component was not included so that all scores were out of a possible 1600 points.
Comparing the states on a level playing field for participation and poverty renders a more accurate comparison among states. The rate of high school seniors taking the SAT varies greatly from one state to another, from 4 to 88 percent, according to data released by the College Board with SAT scores each year. Poverty levels also vary, though not as dramatically, and are tracked by the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau.
The relationship between the logarithm of participation rates and the average state score had an average correlation coefficient of 83.9 percent for years 2000-2006. Participation and poverty had an average correlation coefficient of 88.6 percent for the same years.
The statistical process was reviewed by a member of the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science.

From University Reporter Mac Mollison:

Tonight Student Congress passed unanimously a bill stipulating that all students, with the exception of Carolina Fever members, must be subject to the student body-wide ticket distribution lottery.

After a close reading of the legislation, I confirmed with members of Congress that this meant band members and athletes will no longer be subject to special, limited ticket distribution pools — an unintended consequence of the legislation — if the Department of Athletics decides to abide by the Code in the first place.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m one of the oldest people in the newsroom. As a super-senior, I’ve been here longer than any other staffer. So imagine how old I felt when I walked into the newsroom today and saw so many fresh faces learning their way around the newsroom and plunging in to their first stories for The Daily Tar Heel. Talk about a trip down memory lane.
My first day as a staff writer for the DTH was in September 2002. I had heard about the DTH before I came to UNC, and I made sure I picked up an application the first week of classes. I was a bundle of nerves and also extremely excited (I couldn’t even stomach breakfast.) I had never written for a newspaper; we didn’t have one at my small rural high school. I kept thinking, “What if I mess up? What if they hate me because I know nothing about writing a newspaper article? What if I don’t know what to do?” It felt like the first day of kindergarten.

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Visit the Dive Blog

From University Staff Writer Mac Mollison:

Tuesday’s Student Congress meeting was witness to an unusual amount of personal contention between members, and also saw written statements from Student Body President James Allred and Student Body Treasurer Anisa Mohanty.

Allred’s statement, which criticizes some members of Congress for reluctance to take advice from the the Board of Election’s election law study commission and urges reform of Title VI, which governs elections, is included below. You’ll also find Mohanty’s statement, responding to critisicm of her handling of student fee allocation and commenting on the process.

See tomorrow’s Daily Tar Heel for additional articles about conflict within student
government related to the Tuesday’s meeting, and the passage at the end of the meeting a resolution criticizing CAA’s new ticket policy and pushing for change to the distribution system.

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The town’s GPS tracking system for buses is now live. Check this out:

http://www.nextbus.com/googleMap/googleMap.jsp?a=chapel-hill&r=U&r=RU

You can see if your bus is running late before you leave for class. Or, you can pop open your laptop when class ends to see which stop to run to. Soon, signs at bus stops will display the arrival times for the next buses. Check out Kayla Carrick’s article from Tuesday’s DTH for more information.

Kudos to the town for getting this impressive system running. If it works as planned, public transportation in the area will be more useful and attractive.

—Colin Hicks, Online and Multimedia Editor

From the desk of Ted Strong, city reporter.

During Stephen Coffee’s sentencing, Aoife Iredale read the following poem, which she composed in memory of her fallen guide dog, Inka. I’ll do my best to format it, but even with a transcript provided by William Plyler, Aoife’s attorney, I’m not sure I’ll get all the formatting right. If it’s wrong, please do forgive me, dear reader.

“When the World Went Still”
by Aoife Iredale

I love you like the autumn chill
That hones the Magic of the Earth.
I love you like the winter “Will!”
That echoes through the empty land.
I love you like those blooms of spring
That face frost and thus learn their worth.
I love you like storms summer brings,
Presaging autumn’s harvest-land.

The birds trilled that October morn.
We walked with neither bliss nor care.
You sat; I stood; we simply gave
The last touch we would ever share.
The medics say the drunk man’s car
Broke your neck, breached your life’s well.
I always dreamed I’d ease your death,
But in dread silence we both fell.

I used to know death reunited
Parted souls in love to sing
The songs from which existence springs;
But with death I lay intwining
And in atonal silence wondered
Would my soul’s weave be undone,
Its fibers scattered, parsed, respun;
Or would I as a whole pass on.

You should have turned six two weeks before
The night your small cremains I bore,
In Jerry’s frozen field to pour
The last shards of you that I could touch.
Into your plastic shroud I tear
And scream against the blade-cold air.
I choke in intimate despair;
The final, silent handful falls.

Another sleeps where you once slept
And eats and plays in your old home;
She keeps alive the flame you kept
Of guiding love and perfect trust.
In sleep I hear you by my bed;
Joy thaws my silent heart’s thick ice.
Her hopeful kiss wakes me instead,
No justice for the three of us.

I flee from speech; yet words begin
To salve this anguish in my heart.
My two loves teamed must guide me through
This grief that no one soul can chart.
I love her like the wild wind
That whips and nuzzles, weeps and plays;
But softly I still sing to you.
Our silent gulf will fall away.

Tuition talks officially will begin today — not even two weeks into the academic year.The tuition advisory task force — a diverse 14-member body that consists of administrators, faculty, students and one employee — is charged with recommending tuition policy to Chancellor James Moeser.

When the task force convenes in South Building for its first meeting, it will gloss over the history of tuition policy in an attempt to catch all members up to speed. But as the group meets in the coming weeks, the real work will begin.

Members will try to pinpoint just how many dollars the University needs and if tuition hikes could really help UNC advance its mission.

Ultimately, options will be presented to the Board of Trustees during their November meeting and voted on during the January meeting.

Provost Bernadette Gray-Little, co-chairwoman of the task force, said the problem is upholding dual responsibilities: The first is to look at what kind of economic impact hikes will have on students, and the second is to ensure that UNC’s academic quality continally is improving.

Gray-Little is in charge of the task force for the first time this year. Previously, former Provost Robert Shelton helped guide the body — which he created.Gray-Little said she hopes to continue to push the group forward and help the body come to a clear concensus.

“I have been impressed in past years with the way the group has in past years come to a
point of concensus,” she said. “I think we’ll be able to get to that point through conversation.”

Student Body President James Allred, co-chairman of the task force, said he’s looking forward to leading the effort with Gray-Little.

A chemistry major, Allred said he appreciates that Gray-Little takes an approach that focuses on empiracle data.

“She’s someone who makes decisions based very much on data and evidence,” Allred said. “She’s interested in looking at a lot of numbers before arriving at a decions.”

Gray-Little said the most important thing for members to keep in mind is to respect each other and hear each other out.

But the biggest obstacle officials might face this year is justifying hikes. The N.C. General Assembly was generous this summer offering faculty members across the UNC-system salary increases of 6 percent.

The need for tuition hikes often has been pegged to the fact that UNC needs to raise faculty salaries and benefits to stay competitive with its peer institutions.

Lauren Anderson, president of the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, said graduate students’ main concerns are teaching stipends and faculty salaries.

She said quality faculty greatly increase a graduate student’s experience at UNC.

Anderson said she was pleased with last year’s results — graduate students were left with a $500 increase — but said there’s still work to be done.

Allred also has pointed out that it’s important for the University not to appear greedy in the General Assembly’s eyes.

“We have to be very careful this year because the state was very generous,” Allred said last month. “There could be backlash if the school or trustees were to submit a very drastic proposal.”

Moeser and Gray-Little also both have said that it’s important for UNC officials to be circumspect about their actions.

The big wild card still is what kind of guidelines UNC will receive from either the UNC-system Board of Governors or UNC-system President Erskine Bowles.

Bowles has yet to unveil his tuition proposal, which likely will set maximum tuition increase totals for the next four years. The proposal likely will be kept under wraps until October —meaning UNC’s task force will be forced to examine many options before it sees the policy.
The other big change students can expect to see this year is the way student fees are handled.

Board of Trustees members have expressed concerns with how the process was handled in the past, and called for a more discernible process last spring. The main problem began when last year the UNC-system Board of Governors set a ceiling of $451 for all resident student increases — a number that included tuition and fees.But once the tuition and fees proposals — drafted separately — reached the trustee’s, they were forced to adjust tuition rates because otherwise the University would have gone over the in-state limit set by the BOG.

The tuition increase ultimately approved by the trustees was $250 for undergraduate residents, which was under the BOG ceiling when combined with the fee hike.Because that hike had been reduced, the nonresident undergraduate tuition hike was raised to $1,100 — more than the highest proposal offered by the tuition advisory task force.

Officials this year say a little communication will go a long way to ensuring that such a problem doesn?t occur again this year.

-Erin Zureick, University Editor